


A Place Where I Don't Feel Alone

by failsafe



Series: Chinese Food, Domestic Mishaps, and Possible Heroics [1]
Category: Young Avengers
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Domestic, F/M, Friendship, M/M, Past Tense, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-24
Updated: 2013-03-24
Packaged: 2017-12-06 07:54:59
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,646
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/733224
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/failsafe/pseuds/failsafe
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Chinese food. Having a brother. Having a roommate. Rebecca Kaplan being nice to him. And Kate Bishop. </p><p>Tommy didn't really know how to do the domestic thing, but things might be looking up. </p><p>[Takes place after Children's Crusade.]</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Place Where I Don't Feel Alone

**Author's Note:**

>   * Title from "To Build a Home" by the Cinematic Orchestra. 
>   * This fic was written for the Day 2 'Domestic' prompt for TommyKate Week for fuckyeahtommykate on tumblr. It and time kind of got away from me. 
>   * Background but somewhat significant Billy/Teddy. 
>   * Tommy and Teddy friendship a bit significant also. 
>   * This is basically my wishful thinking about a way that the core of our original team might have grown back together as told from Tommy's perspective. 
>   * There are some allusions to Billy's canon depression, in case that bothers anyone. 
> 


Tommy didn't know how to do domestic.

He didn't know how to do having his own bed, so for a while he'd managed to be just insistent enough to keep the couch. But the Kaplans had kept on insisting, and eventually he found himself with a bed in Billy's parents' apartment. A bed across from Teddy's, because they hadn't known they'd need two extra bedrooms instead of just one. He had wondered for about a month why the Kaplans didn't just let Billy and Teddy start sharing. It wasn't like they weren't, probably—but then he'd realized. Parents.

And he and Billy were seventeen. And there was probably some kind of developmental psychology-type justification for why Billy's parents cared about the _appearance_ that Billy and Teddy were never alone together in a room with a bed at night or long enough to do anything, because Billy's mom cared about shit like that, and she'd want to believe in the appearance rather than the reality, and... it made his head hurt.

Parents. Parents who cared, even when it was ironically hilarious.

He didn't know how to do that either.

\- - -

After one evening when Billy's parents had taken them out—dragged Billy out—to a Chinese buffet, Tommy couldn't sleep. He was exhausted in a way that he was entirely unaccustomed to, his body aching with the pent up desire to run and run and run away and hide for a while. Be alone.

He'd known he should have ducked out of going, but it was food—a lot of food—and someone else was paying, and he could eat his fill and no one would look at him weird unless they were seated directly across the table from him. He'd sat across from Billy—who, unfortunately, couldn't muster much more than a little snarled raise of his eyebrows when Tommy ate two piled high plates-full after he'd opened his fortune cookie without actually eating it. But he could deal with Billy being just a little grossed out. That's what brothers did, right?

Right. He didn't know how to do that either.

He didn't have any idea what to do with the fact that Billy's favorite thing to _not_ enjoy doing was to stare out the window all day. Come rain or come shine, on the days they didn't go to school, in the afternoons after they did—when Tommy did—Billy just sat and stared out the window. And Tommy figured he wasn't doing a great job figuring out this magical twin thing, or whatever, because even he couldn't persuade him to shift his attention.

Staring up at the ceiling for what felt like _forever—_ about nine minutes—Tommy could imagine he understood how utterly maddening it must be in Billy's head right now, whatever was going on. He reached up loosely for his forehead and the top of his white hair and his fingertips touched it. He sighed heavily. He could hear Teddy's slowly deepening breathing across the room, but he didn't think he was asleep yet.

“Hey. Altman,” he said, conversationally.

“... Yeah?” Teddy asked, like he was so drowsy his lips were sticking together but he answered anyway after a second. Tommy didn't know what to say and for a few further seconds he didn't say anything. “You want to talk?” Teddy prompted, squirming to sit up a little bit and look across the room at him through the darkness.

“Yeah. Why not? Cellmate,” Tommy replied, carefully nonchalant.

“You want to tell me what you're talking about?”

“You act like you know me so well. Aren't you supposed to know what I'm talking about?” Tommy asked. He didn't know why he was getting defensive. He'd started it.

“I know you to the exact extent that I'm fairly certain I barely know you at all.”

“Yeah. Well,” Tommy replied, not much to say when either Billy or Teddy came out with things like that. Some kind of philosophical bullshit they said because they wanted him around but didn't have the faintest clue why. No one actually wanted Tommy around badly enough to have a good reason. But it was a place to stay. For now. “... I just thought we'd be back out there by now.”

And Teddy was supposed to know what that meant. They'd agreed.

“Oh,” Teddy said, lowering himself back down to stare at his own patch of ceiling. So he did know what Tommy meant. Good?

“Yeah, that's what I thought.”

“What?”

“Cellmate.”

“Tommy, I've got—Billy's—“ Teddy tried, finally giving up on a heavy exhale.

“Yeah, I know.” Only Tommy didn't know what to do about it either.

\- - -

After that night, he had noticed Teddy looking at Billy with ever-so-slightly less patience (but never unkindly because Teddy was Teddy and Billy was Billy). Tommy probably should have felt defensive, but more than anything he sometimes started to feel an ill-shaped kind of hope settle into his chest. Maybe Teddy would say something to Billy that would finally work—no more dangling newspapers in his face or trying and failing to get him to pay attention to news reports. He'd finally get Billy to get up off his ass and stop feeling sorry—and then Tommy, occasionally, had the self-restraint to stop himself.

It wasn't like he wasn't feeling sorry for himself, too. But if he was going to stay here? There wasn't anything he could do about it.

So he went through the motions too, going to school most days and smelling the sometimes-sterile halls and musty old book paper until he just... couldn't, anymore. It wasn't the work—he could do that, when he bothered. It wasn't the people, though he didn't exactly associate with anyone other than Billy and Teddy. It wasn't anything really except that he hated it, and it got to the point that skipping more than half the time wasn't enough to keep the walls from seeming to close in when he was there. He couldn't stand the smell, couldn't stand the people—even the nice ones—and he just couldn't stand schools. The way they herded them around like cattle, even if it was just based on a paper schedule they handed you at the beginning of the year. The pointlessness of it all. And slowly, it started to build up again—that vibration and tension in his body that had built up and built up until one day, somewhere back in New Jersey, his piss-poor excuse for a life had exploded.

The Kaplans definitely wouldn't keep letting him live with them if that happened again.

The evening he decided, he zipped over to Billy's seat by the window and sat down right in front of him, leaning in until Billy caught his breath and made a face at his being in his face. As soon as he'd gotten Billy's attention, he sat back a little.

“So,” he said.

Billy looked at him, sighed, and started to shift his gaze back to the window.

Tommy reached out and pushed at his knee.

“What?” Billy snapped but there wasn't much vigor or volume behind it. Tommy knew he was anticipating more efforts to get him up, to get him back out there, back on patrol, or just up from his seat, but this time Tommy had decided he was just going to talk about him. People didn't ask very often anyway, and he didn't volunteer, but Billy ought to know this. Maybe just to let him know where Tommy had gone when he got kicked out since he was checked out most of the time anyway.

“I'm quitting school,” he announced.

“You what?”

“Don't give me that look,” Tommy said without even checking to see what expression Billy had. He looked out across the living room and just barely noticed in the periphery of his vision that Billy was looking at him again.

“... Okay. If that's what you think's _best_ for you, don't let me stop you,” Billy said after a long moment's contemplation, glancing down at the floor before he got up and padded, barefoot, across the carpet and into the kitchen. Tommy heard him turn on the tap.

“Oh, what the hell,” Tommy complained, his voice carrying from one room to the next and he had followed Billy in less than a second once he'd decided to move. He didn't even bother inflecting it as a question, because seriously, Billy was at least supposed to give him some bullshit line about how they ought to stay in school, stick it out because it was all they had now, if they were done with the superhero thing for good. Not that Tommy was ever going to believe that, but his brother was supposed to say _something_ other than that to his deciding to quit school, even if it _was_ for the best.

Billy just stared straight ahead at the kitchen sink as he lifted a glass of water to his lips and drank. He finished about half of it and then set it down to take a breath. Tommy stared at him incredulously.

“Mom, Tommy says he's quitting school,” Billy said and Tommy felt his whole body tense as he glanced over and saw Rebecca Kaplan sitting at the kitchen table just out of his line of sight, reading a magazine or a journal or something. His skin burned and it wasn't with shame—why should he be ashamed or that accountable to any of these people? But Rebecca Kaplan had never yelled at him before and he didn't want her to start now. She put her magazine down and Tommy braced himself.

“Ass— _tattletale_ ,” Tommy hissed at Billy, changing his mind about insults mid-thought. His thoughts went fast like that.

“An 'ass-tattletale,' that's me,” Billy replied in a low, dry, near-singsong. Tommy glared at him but then the muscles around his eyes relaxed a little involuntarily when Billy met his eyes in turn. His jaw slacked just a little from being set and he hated that he couldn't follow through with being as pissed at him as he wanted to be. He was pissed, but that was the nearest thing to Billy he'd seen in weeks. Billy picked up his glass and started to move past Tommy. His shoulder and upper arm brushed tightly against him, enough to make him drag a bit, and Billy turned to speak near Tommy's ear. “I wasn't _planning_ on telling her, but you weren't going to.”

Then Tommy just stood there as Billy headed back to the living room—probably back to the window.

He finally hazarded a glance toward Rebecca Kaplan and she had her hands folded, eyes fixed on him behind her friendly-librarian glasses. Not that Tommy frequented many libraries.

“What is this, Thomas? You're 'quitting school'?” she asked, conversationally and indicating that he should come sit across from her with a very small gesture of her hand.

Tommy reached up and rubbed at the back of his neck and glanced through the door after Billy for a moment and then acknowledged her gesture with a little shake of his head.

“Nah... Nah, I'm good. I just don't need to go to school anymore. That's all I was saying. I wanna... get my GED, or something.” Tommy didn't know why he would actually bother with that either—he could learn any stuff he needed to on his own time and he could read most books in about two minutes if he let himself move and think as fast as he could.

“Have a seat please, Thomas,” Rebecca encouraged.

“It's Tommy,” Tommy corrected automatically. He glanced at her and then trudged over to the table, dragging his feet but not slowly enough to avoid this for as long as he would have liked—he didn't know how to move that slowly. Might as well get this over with. He sat down in a chair diagonally across from her.

“... Right. Tommy. Why do you want to get your GED?” she prompted.

“I don't really,” Tommy said honestly. He saw her lift her eyebrows a little bit and he forced himself not to wince, not to remember or think. Rebecca Kaplan had never yelled at him and certainly nothing worse.

“You're a very smart, capable young man,” she commented.

Tommy knew he shouldn't have but he sneered a little and chuckled. He cleared his throat and tried to tamp that reaction down but he hadn't completely gotten rid of the expression when he looked at her.

“Sorry,” he apologized for his face, pressing his lips together, reigning it in more. “You got the wrong guy.”

“Tommy—“

“Look, I know I look like your son. But I'm not him. So you don't have to treat me like you think of us the same.”

“... I don't,” Rebecca answered after a brief silence. Tommy raised his eyebrows and waited, looking at her more consistently. “I don't think of you as I think of my son. I have not raised you and I haven't watched you grow up, the way I have with Billy. But you and Teddy are his friends, and more importantly than that, you are his family. That makes you a part of ours. And I care for my family and their well-being.”

It was a lot more clinical than when they talked to Wanda about this kind of thing. Tommy wasn't sure if that made him more or less uncomfortable, but it had his attention, even if he wanted to fight it. Finally he just shook his head and looked down at his hand, flexing and popping his finger joints a little as he rested his wrist against the table.

“Sorry,” he said simply.

“For what? Why do you feel you need to apologize to me?”

“Nothing. I don't. I'll just... I don't know. I'll find something. Maybe go back to fucking New Jersey.”

Rebecca didn't respond in the slightest to his language even though he'd never heard her swear. Instead she reached out and very lightly, tentatively touched his fingers and he almost flinched. Almost, but didn't. He wouldn't let her see that—wouldn't let her see him remember.

“Tommy, you don't have to go anywhere. However, I don't think it's in your best interest to quit school. You do... fairly well, don't you?”

“Yeah. Sometimes. But that doesn't—“

“Matter? Of course it matters. You matter.”

Tommy stared at her hard for a moment and he wanted to sneer again but he couldn't find one hint of forced and fake sincerity in her gentle smile—professionalism, maybe, but the sincerity was all there and all real.

“... I guess I could do actual classes or whatever. Here. If they'd let me. I can write a couple of papers before I test out, or... something. Do they do that?”

Tommy only realized he'd been talking very fast when he realized Rebecca was mouthing along after him, her brow furrowing tight. He waited to see if it had been comprehensible at all.

“So, you would like to do home-bound schooling of some kind?” she pursued after she'd been frowning for a full, eternal-to-Tommy minute.

“If you say so?” he agreed dubiously, and he thought he might have done it just because she'd sifted through all that to get something that was actually a solution to, apparently, give him what he wanted. What she wanted, too. A compromise. Tommy wasn't used to compromising with people.

\- - -

It had been weeks since then. It had been weeks since a lot of things.

Months, really.

It had been months since anything had happened. But Tommy tried to stretch out the school work he did as a kind of rent, he took it, but it never took long enough to fill a full day. Sometimes that was kind of awesome and he could go out and have a full day of doing whatever the hell he wanted out on the streets before coming home consistently to dinner or a family going out to eat and finally a bed at night. It was almost nice.

But it wasn't what they were supposed to be doing. Even he thought he was beginning to forget what the Young Avengers were.

The rest of them had.

Eli had gone to Scottsdale, just like he said he would. Wimping out. Just a great big disappointment and it kind of figured.

Kate had been by sometimes in the beginning, but then she'd stopped coming around, too. He thought it was kind of just a habit she'd gotten over, and he wondered how she _could_ do that, but it wasn't the first time she'd surprised him like that. Disappointed him too, as long as he was being honest.

And then there was Billy and whatever the hell was up with him that Tommy didn't know how to fix and that Teddy didn't know how to fix and that his parents didn't know how to fix.

And, well, Teddy was busy _trying_ to fix it.

That left Tommy. On his own. And he wasn't doing the Young Avenger thing all by himself.

So one late autumn day around noon, he was alone and there was jack-shit he could do. It was raining out and the wind was up, and he could run anywhere he liked but in that weather he figured it felt like being in a cold cycle in a washing machine to get up any speed at all. His legs itched with pent up energy, but there was nothing to do, so he turned on the TV.

And he stared at it, increasingly hating the way even it moved slowly.

But then there was a knock at the door.

Tommy looked up across the apartment and through into the kitchen at the clock on the microwave. No one else was home and no one ever came by in the middle of the day unless it was one of the Kaplans, and they both had keys.

It still didn't feel like he actually lived here, so for a moment he hesitated before moving to get up and answer it, but he put the TV on mute and got up anyway, opening the door without checking the peep hole because he was sure he could take whatever was on the other side, if need be. He forgot about the chain lock and it caused the door to resist so hard that it almost bounced back shut but he tensed enough to keep it from closing all the way and then he gave it another less forceful tug and peered through the gap.

And then, just like no time had passed at all, she was there.

Kate Bishop. She wasn't wearing her school uniform, and she was soaking wet from head to toe. Water was beaded up on her purple, woolen coat, and the fact that she was wearing purple still kind of stung. Her usually straight, dark hair dripped a little at the ends and showed forth what little bit of wave it had. Tommy normally wasn't given to thinking about the mechanics of make-up, but he wondered how it was that her make up seemed mostly-unsmudged and to be clinging on even though water dripped down from somewhere along her nose, down to the tip of it. There was something bright about her eyes but it wasn't the brightness he recognized, and as the water droplet made its way down past the tip when she moved, she breathed in. He could hear it—sniffly but more than the droplet merited. The fact remained that she was kind of breathing rainwater.

“Can I come in?” she asked, and her voice sounded a little caught in her throat but she smiled just a little in a practiced, friendly kind of way. Tommy wasn't sure if he liked it or not because it felt so formal—too formal for a friend. Way too formal for a girl he'd kissed. Once.

“Uhm,” Tommy said. He started to explain that Billy and Teddy weren't home. That nobody was home. Except he was 'home,' and she was standing out in the hallway in an apartment building that was nowhere near as nice as the digs she was used to and she was soaking wet and he had been a superhero once upon a time and he couldn't just leave her standing there dripping, her clothes dripping onto the floor a bit. “Sure,” he said instead, and he shut the door but so fast that she couldn't have even actually seen him unfasten the chain and hold the door back for her to enter.

“Thanks,” Kate said in rote as she stepped in. She slipped off her shoes by the door and shrugged off her coat so she was walking onto the carpeted area of the apartment in some kind of really tall socks.

“... Let me get you a towel,” Tommy realized he should offer and then he zipped off to the bathroom and got a big fluffy thing out of the closet that it almost embarrassed him to offer her, but it wasn't _his_ big fluffy towel. She accepted it with another little tight smile and she started to towel out her hair carefully as she made her way to the living room and toward the couch. Apparently it hadn't been so long that she'd forgotten. Tommy watched her walk and tried not to let his eyes wander. He was human. Mutant. “Aren't you supposed to be in school or something? It's noon and it's Wednesday.”

She sat down on the sofa and patted the spot beside her as if she had never stopped coming around and had every right to be the one inviting him to have a seat. Kate Bishop was asking him to sit by her, though, so Tommy didn't resist.

“You a truancy officer now? Why aren't you in school?”

“I'm such a prodigy, they let me quit.”

“Uh-huh.”

“I hated it, so they started letting me do my shit at home before I vaporized the place.”

“You... put in a 'bomb threat' at your school?” Kate asked, and then she looked at him with widened eyes, just a little horrified.

“What? No! No, I mean... it hadn't gotten _that_ bad. I just... asked. The Kaplans took care of it.”

“Oh,” Kate said, and then she started taking a weird amount of interest in her arms, gently toweling each of them down four times more than necessary. She propped her feet up on the edge of the short little coffee table in front of the couch. Then she proceeded to not say anything and stare at nothing for a minute and Tommy started to get antsy and uncomfortable. He turned toward her just a little bit, but he didn't get close enough to touch her.

“Hey. Not to be... rude or anything, but what are you doing here, Kate?”

“That is rude,” she pointed out to him but without any real conviction. Also without looking up at him, and he hated the sense that the way she was looking down kind of made him think she looked ashamed. Kate wasn't supposed to be _ashamed_ of anything. She didn't get embarrassed. But then he'd seen what shame looked like—that last day. The day everyone but him had called it quits. The day they'd called it quits _for_ him.

“Yeah, well,” Tommy put in, deciding to try to get a rise out of her if nothing else, “so's you showing up unannounced, isn't it?”

Kate glanced up at him—score? She looked at him incredulously, and he knew it was surprise that he knew anything about manners or whatever because she'd given him that look before.

“Touché,” she said.

“Quit trying to talk over my head,” Tommy teased, allowing himself a small smile.

“I'm not,” she said, and he could tell she was trying not to smile, but she crossed her arms across her chest and hugged them both lightly. There he was, thinking this was getting something close to easy again, but then her eyes took on a darker shade of seriousness and her brow did this little thing where there was a half-formed crinkle in it just as she was about to start frowning but hadn't quite gotten there yet. He wondered when exactly it was that he'd gotten to know so much about her face.

“What are you doing here?” he repeated, more deliberately kind than he could remember ever saying anything because she was kind of starting to scare him. He wanted her here. He did, more than it was safe to admit, but she had just stopped. And now she was acting like nothing had happened and nothing was wrong and that itself was weird.

“I just—I didn't want to be alone, today,” she said. She met his eyes for a long moment but then she glanced down, but he realized her gaze was still somewhere along the side of his body.

“What's today?” he asked, basing his question on the way she said it.

“Tommy—“ she pleaded and it made Tommy raise his white eyebrows at her a little. What could she possibly be asking for?

Kate Bishop had everything in the world she wanted. She could get everything she could ever want. Only she didn't, and Tommy knew that. He didn't know why he knew it or when he'd started knowing it. He just did. And he'd known that before she had lost her best friend and the life she'd made for herself _because_ she didn't have everything she needed. He thought he knew her, almost, a little—pretty girl with blue eyes and black hair and a killer body, and she'd almost been one of his best friends. Back when he'd almost had best friends. And it had almost scared him and then what scared him the most was the way he had missed her when all that had stopped.

He had missed everything, but he'd missed her in particular.

And all of that seemed to narrow down to a pinpoint as he stared right back as she studied him. He could tell she was thinking, but he couldn't imagine what. When her eyes flit down a bit, he felt his heart start to sink and he was aware of its pounding, but then he realized she was shutting her eyes and leaning in toward him and that this was one of those moments when he had forgotten how fast he could perceive things and how it made everything seem to go in slow motion.

Then his heart wasn't sinking, because she was kissing him and he had a moment that wouldn't have been a moment to anyone else to decide what to do, and it was pumping adrenaline through him. He had a moment to decide, but he couldn't imagine doing anything else, so his hand went up where it belonged—feeling the slight rounding of her head, just behind her ear as his fingers felt damp and drying hair mingled together and tangled on his fingers. He kissed her back at the pace she wanted and then just a little eagerly but without demand, because when Kate Bishop kissed you that's just what you _did_. That's what he did, anyway.

He tasted her voice as she hummed softly into his lips and the vibration made his ears and spine tingle. She was already everywhere in his head so much that when she rolled her body a little closer and he moved his relaxed arm to wrap around her almost casually, she actually managed to surprise him when her body did a near full turn, just dragging across his lips artfully as she adjusted and straddled his lap.

Tommy tilted his nose down and broke the kiss to raggedly catch his breath and promptly look back up at her, his fingers still in the length of her hair and moving back up to tuck it behind her ear as he tried to stop feeling startled and dazed at once.

“Whoa, hey—“ he said, and he wasn't sure if it was in awe or what, but for a split second it occurred to him to be a little worried about her. But fucked if he knew why. He just looked up at her and waited for some explanation, hoping that explanation didn't lead to whatever this was stopping because he really liked this. He glanced down for just a second and remembered that she was wearing a _skirt_. She was wearing a skirt and it was a little shorter than her school uniform one and her thighs were spread out—parted over his—and it pulled the skirt taught and if he moved at all whatsoever he could see up it and she'd been kissing him so that might even be allowed, and—damn it.

His gaze snapped back up to hers just in time to nearly interrupt her as she said:

“I want to... I mean, we could—“

Tommy would have been completely incapable in his current state—getting hard with Kate Bishop on his lap and nothing at all he could do about it—of understanding what she meant had she not helpfully and pointedly glanced and tilted her head back just a little, indicating the short hallway that led off to the bedrooms. He could have come undone right then and there, but she was Kate Bishop and she deserved at least a bed, and he tried to go through a mental checklist that was completely devoid of coherent items about what he should do in this situation other than just scream _'oh, fuck yes,'_ or something even less dignified and respectful that wasn't actually all he meant anyway.

“What? Really...?” he finally managed. Oh well. Better idiot than asshole.

“Yeah,” Kate replied, “if you want to.” And then she stopped touching his shoulders the way she had been and her hands dropped down between them as she fidgeted very slightly in a way that made her look a bit smaller than Kate Bishop ever did. She reached up and tucked her hair behind the opposite ear to match what Tommy had done and looked at him and he wondered just how it was that she could possibly get the idea that she'd ever _need_ that sort of imploring, humble look she was giving him. It actually kind of broke his heart a little—Kate looking at him like that, not knowing that she could have, take just about anything she wanted. It was kind of sad. Confusing as hell, too, but it gave him enough pause to realize just _how much_ he really, really, really wanted to not-be-an-asshole about this.

“... Okay,” he replied, and there was probably something better that he was supposed to say about it, but he reached up and brushed his thumb slowly against her jaw, up toward her ear and felt the way it made her breath in steadily and deeply through her slightly parted lips.

\- - -

They hadn't said much when they'd gathered themselves up from the couch, made themselves separate enough to take this kind of awkward walk to the bedroom he shared with Teddy Altman. He wondered if it was as awkward for her to walk casually and calmly when she... wanted... something as it was for him to walk with a hard-on. But then, walking in general and not running was awkward for him.

Once they were in his room, he closed the door and waited with shallow breaths for her to decide what to do. She still moved as gracefully as ever as she stepped between the two opposing beds, closer to Teddy's but with her back to it as she looked down at Tommy's. He wondered how she knew which one was his for sure, but she'd guessed right.

“Um, do you wanna—“ she suggested and then indicated with her hand that she wanted him to lie down first. His face flushed a little because, okay, he wasn't used to doing this ever when there wasn't some speed involved, some passion and some desperation and certainly no conscious negotiations about placement or much about timing.

“Sure?” Tommy said, even more dubiously than he intended and he was just glad that his voice hadn't cracked like he was thirteen. He moved over to his own bed and laid down on his back, hooking his fingers down into his socks and shedding them before he did but certainly not wasting any of her time with it. He wondered if it was going to become painfully awkward in a second, but then he watched as she looked him up and down and then lifted one knee and touched it down to the edge of his mattress. It parted her legs in a very slightly unladylike way, her skirt moving accordingly, and he could see a little patch of her skin above her thigh-high and it just made him intensely aware of how fucking beautiful she was. Not just pretty. Beautiful. And he didn't know how to breathe as she moved again and shifted so both her knees were on the bed and then crawled the small space over to him in the twin-size bed, one knee to either side of him once more.

She held herself over him and her hair fell down—thick and like a curtain, especially to one side. He looked up at her and squirmed beneath because even though she was _over_ him, she hadn't lowered herself down, and his erection was straining now and feeling neglected. He forced a mantra through his head of _'Don't rush it,' 'Don't rush it...'_

“Damn,” he breathed.

For a second, he was afraid he'd said the wrong thing because she blinked, drawing his little exclamation into her focus, but then she grinned this sweet but very bedroom grin.

“Thank you,” she acknowledged, bringing agile, artfully calloused fingertips up to his cheek and he shivered as he felt her lower herself down with the other arm, kissing him deeply on the mouth.

Kissing her felt like the pleasant—no, the fucking awesome—but equal opposite of diving into deep, dark, icy-cold water. Disorienting and it took his breath, making a deep, hungry ache set in.

And she'd said she _wanted_ to.

He let his hands come up to her waist and he felt up and down them, even letting his fingers indulge in the soft fabric of her shirt rather than trying to get it off quickly. The way she was kissing him—it was deep and her tongue met his but only in very gentle starts and stops and sometimes she was kissing each of his lips individually. Then sometimes it wasn't even quite kissing at all but it was shared, hard breathing and he'd never felt that kind of failed-kissing-that-counted because you were gasping outside sex before, but when he felt it with her, he finally felt a little more grounded in familiar desperation. Only the fact that it was desperation was the only thing familiar about it. It ached and ached and it didn't stop even when they tasted one another again and he could feel it in her the same as he thought she was feeling it in him, and the ache didn't _just_ settle into his groin.

He didn't want to rush her, but he got up the nerve and very gently tried gripping at the small of her waist, drawing her down just slightly to see if she'd let him share in more of her body heat. He felt her letting her knees slide along his half-made bed and the blankets dragging beneath him as they both shifted. She let him tug her down a bit, but she lowered her hand from his jaw to feel down along his chest. He made a little sound when her palm dragged across his small, slightly erect nipple through his shirt and he nearly started laughing but she just smiled against his lips as she felt down from the hem of his shirt. Then he felt her warm callouses and soft skin against the more tender, untouched skin of his stomach. She started to try to gently work her way up beneath the shirt.

He breathed in tightly, making his abdomen feel compressed and small and then he breathed a little quicker and realized he was almost laughing again, that the touch almost tickled. Normally, he hated slow things, but he thought he wouldn't have minded if this had somehow managed to take up forever. But there was an instinctive part of him that couldn't stand it and he was so tense in trying to keep it going this slow that he started to shiver.

“You okay?” Kate asked as she broke the kiss and stilled her hand somewhere against his ribs.

“Y-Yeah,” Tommy said as his teeth chattered for just a second, somewhere, anywhere for the pent up energy to go, but then he managed a more cavalier smile and was steady again.

“Can I take off your shirt?” Kate asked then, a playful little smile forming on her lips as she tugged up at the shirt from beneath, stretching it a bit out of shape.

“Be my guest,” Tommy replied, lifting his arms obediently over his head. Kate tugged and fought with the fabric until his vision was obscured by t-shirt and he was still trapped and they were both laughing and he felt like everything in the world was strangely, impossibly light until he heard the slightest growl of frustration work into Kate's voice. He felt it in his dick, too, and then her knees pressed into his sides a little more and he thought to remember to be just a little bit afraid of her but that was sort of hot. She shifted their weight and he realized she was using her own body weight as leverage to turn them over and he complied.

Kate turned onto her back and slid in toward the center and Tommy realized it was an invitation to move _over_ her and he had to remind himself—breathe, breathe. He had gotten his head back through the appropriate hole in his shirt so he could see to move but only just in time to catch himself as he got on top of Kate Bishop and she parted her legs beneath him and they were both still fully clothed down there but the thought of it made him almost afraid he was going to lose it before their clothes even came off. She was helpfully distracting him, though, grabbing for his shirt with a more steely determination and he bowed his head and rolled his shoulders until they finally succeeded in taking his shirt off.

When she had finished with her task, she seemed a little breathless and the laughter that had hung between them seemed to evaporate as she looked up at him. She furrowed her dark brows just a bit but then reached up for the tendon between his shoulder and neck and ran her fingers up until she reached the back of his neck and pulled him back down.

This time when he kissed her, he thought it tasted a little sad, a little distracted, and he braced himself for... something. He didn't know what. But before he had time to find and meet her pace, her lips dragged off of his and found his jaw and she leaned up enough to trail the kisses down and to his throat, squirming beneath him and he moved his hips involuntarily. He rolled them in, grinding against her, and he could feet the front of her skirt come just a little further up and he was pretty sure he was grinding directly against the front of her panties even without looking. He wondered if she was wet and he hoped that she was wet and he gave the softest but most undignified little cry as he felt the friction but it was not _enough_ to do anything except make him throb, make the head of his cock weep a little, and he couldn't feel her body's heat through the thick seam over the fly of his jeans.

“Please,” he said because he couldn't help it at all. Apparently she felt something because where her lips and tongue touched his neck, her teeth did just a little, too and she arched her hips back up at him, pressing up off the bed, and he had this wicked thought that Kate could probably twist and turn and writhe any damn way she wanted to.

She gripped at the back of his hair and her kisses became more demanding at his shoulder, making these suggestive suckling noises and making his skin sting and the thought that it'd leave marks just make him feel even more helplessly turned on. She was breathing fast and hard but then so was he and he didn't think anything of it until she spoke again.

“God, I—I missed—“ she was saying, trying desperately to get out as her lips hovered at his shoulder and tasted at his skin just a little bit less forcefully. She didn't seem to be able to finish her thought, though.

Just as Tommy was blinking his focus clear, trying to not-be-an-asshole since she seemed to think whatever she was trying to say was fairly important, just as he was glancing over at her face, he thought he'd never heard anything so loud as the front door unlocking. It crashed and tumbled and he didn't even need amplified hearing to hear Rebecca Kaplan's sensible-heeled shoes clicking on the floor as she made her way from the front door and into the kitchen. He heard one end of a conversation and figured she was on the phone, and he was grateful to her for everything she'd been trying to do—he really, honestly was—but he also wished she'd _stop talking_ because as the sound carried through the apartment and his erection still ached against Kate's body but with a little less enthusiasm. They were both tense and he pushed himself up against taut arms and she turned to face front and stared up at him, wide-eyed.

“ _What—“_ Kate hissed at him but he felt a little jolt of panic and he very gently brought his hand up and _nearly_ pressed it down to her lips to hush her but he saw this little glint of fear and anger behind her eyes and he stopped himself and just reached down and grabbed for the bunched up blankets instead. He caught some air in one of them and tented it over them both, his elbows down against the bed to either side of her as she still leaned over her but with just a little bit of space between his dick and her parted legs.

“ _Ssshh_ ,” he negotiated softly.

Then they were quiet and stared and the blanket changed the color of the light around them to a dull but kind of pleasant yellow and on such a gray, dreary day it seemed almost... cinematic, or something. She was gorgeous, her slightly-tangled dark hair splayed out on his pillow, her gaze so hauntingly vulnerable beneath him that it almost made him afraid. She didn't look afraid, though—not quite. It was... something else as she just stayed still and breathed and he tried to synch his breathing with hers, slowing down and meeting pace with the rest of the world—with her world.

With his free hand he lightly clawed through her hair, feeling its texture and the pillowcase. She exhaled sharply and he thought he might have tugged her hair, but if he had she didn't let on any further. Instead, she tilted her chin down but lifted her head up just a bit, her nose brushing along—cool at the tip—the hollow of his neck just beneath his Adam's apple. She breathed again and her breath warmed where the cool skin had made him want to shiver.

He heard the distant crackle of what sounded like a paper bag and then a firm closing of the front door and Rebecca's voice faded as she left the apartment. He heard her lock the door back behind her. The chain was unlocked. They hadn't made much noise. Of course it was reasonable for her to assume he'd gone out. He was allowed to do that here.

“Close one,” Tommy said dryly because he was supposed to supply the cliché. His fingers slowly combed down along the length of her hair, shaping it to the curve of her shoulder and tentatively letting fingertips touch her collarbone and brush at the edge of her shirt, exposing just a fraction of an inch more of her skin. He was pretty sure his eyelashes fluttered a bit as he lowered his chin and brought his mouth to the elegant line of her neck, kissing until he heard his own lips and tongue move—softly, gently, tasting and taking in. He could feel her breathe—deep and almost sleepy beneath him as her fingertips lightly, distractedly drummed before she gripped over his bared shoulder, taking the roundness into her palm.

“Tommy,” she said abruptly, calling his attention and lowering her chin where she'd been drawing it up a little, closing off the space he'd had access to along her neck.

“Yeah, babe—“

“I can't do this,” Kate announced firmly and her hand kept holding his shoulder but she pushed up very lightly—pushing him off her, he realized, and his heart sank again and a selfish part of him wanted to ask something like, _'Really?'_ but that wasn't fair. He grit his teeth tight and lifted up onto his arms and rolled off to her side, still looking at her with a tight, furrowed brow.

“What happened?” he asked, and he wasn't sure if he was asking about right now or, actually, more about what it was that made her even consider coming to his bed in the first place. “Are you—please don't just _go_ again. I don't... know if I ever made you think—“ he started to say but then he stopped himself. Tommy didn't talk like that—not about his _feelings_ or what he _wanted_ because it, obviously, didn't really matter very much.

“No. I don't—“ Kate said, struggling for words just as much as her focus cleared and she looked at him but then pointedly down toward the foot of his bed, sighing to herself. He glanced down the way she did and noticed her feet moving beneath the blanket he'd draped over them and he couldn't help thinking about those thigh-high socks, the gap between her skirt and the tops of them, but he had to stop for now.

“Look, Kate, I've... been trying to tell you since I met you—“ Tommy said after a moment, desperate, frustrated, and _not_ just to get back to that place there was between them where they wanted to kiss and touch each other because it apparently _did_ exist and wasn't just a fluke. But then maybe he was the fluke and just hadn't quite accepted it enough yet. Either way, he wanted her to stop looking like that—that lost, deadened expression that made her seem too young and too small even though she could pin him to the ground anytime she felt like it. He didn't want to start talking about _feelings_ and stuff, but if there were anyone's feelings he wanted to talk about, they were hers. He reached up and brushed her hair back from her forehead, toward the space along her scalp above her ear. That got him another glance and he continued. “—You can tell me.”

Kate stared at him for a long, long time and he could imagine the sound of a clock ticking—he hated ticking clocks—even though there wasn't one in the room. Finally, she looked back down toward her feet and he thought it was a lost cause but she rubbed her lips together and took a deep breath.  
  


“My best friend _died,_ ” she said, and he remembered hearing her say it before. Her eyes welled up this time too, just like they had that day, and he watched as they spilled from the corners and he brushed one away as soon as it had cleared the area right around her pretty blue eye that was nearest to him. She started breathing quicker like she might start to cry in earnest but he thumbed away another tear from her opposite cheek. He had no idea what to do with a crying girl as old as he was. He had to try, though. He always had to try with her.

“I could be your best friend,” he said, and it was slow enough to be understandable but too fast for him to stop his fucking mouth. He immediately knew, before it even left his tongue, that it was probably the worst thing in the entire world that he could have said. But he was Tommy Shepherd, so of course he'd said it anyway. And sure enough, Kate was gawking at him, but at least she wasn't crying anymore. She looked a little pissed and a little but queasy but then she had that little wrinkle in her forehead and then her brows were tight again and she looked away from him and that quick-breathing started again and then she _was_ actually crying.

Good job, Shepherd.

“Hey, hey,” Tommy pleaded and he moved the upper half of his body toward and over her a bit again but this time he just put his arm around her waist and pressed his mouth just to her hairline and breathed without intent. He tugged her just a little closer, hugging and holding onto her because she was Kate Bishop and she was beautiful and she was crying and it was because of him. He hated himself but he didn't hate her. Then, to his surprise, she turned in toward him too. She lifted her knee and it touched the top of his leg and he begged his mind not to go there again and found distraction enough in the way she blinked dampened eyes against his shoulder on bare skin. She held onto him and bit by bit she hugged him too, up around his neck.

“Can I stay?” she asked after what felt like forever, sniffling and muffled.

“What?” Tommy asked. He'd made out the words but he didn't understand the question.

“Please,” she said. “I don't want to go back... _home_. I don't... want to be alone. All the time. All of it's just so—“ she was trying to explain but then she just shook a little again even though her crying and hitching was starting to slow.

Stay? Stay, as in stay here at this apartment, he guessed. It wasn't his home, and he didn't know why even she'd think to ask him, but he couldn't turn her away.

“... Uh, yeah. Yeah, you can,” he said. Or they could both end up out on their asses and he'd eat his words and she maybe would hate him, but at least she had places to go to put a roof over her head. He could make sure she got there if his promise bit him in the ass. But maybe, just maybe, the Kaplans liked their son well enough to just let all his friends move in on a short-term basis. At least Kate smelled better than a houseful of boys.

“Just a little while,” Kate mumbled and he felt her body relax and wondered if she was all at once about to go to sleep. She got so still, but the muscle tension in her arms stayed steady, kept holding onto him. “I just... don't want to be alone.”

“It's okay,” Tommy assured her, hoping it would be.

“I'm sorry,” she said, eventually.

“Don't worry about it.” And Tommy thought about feeling sorry for himself just a _little_ so long as he was doing the right thing, but then she kissed his cheek near the edge of his ear and he wondered if maybe that wasn't entirely hopeless. He let the feeling sorry for himself thing go for the moment.

\- - -

They stayed still for a while, but Tommy could only do still for so long when he was awake and he realized it would probably go over better with the Kaplans if the girl he was inviting to stay wasn't in his bed when he asked. So eventually they ended up back on the sofa, and they were sitting at opposite ends of it, but when he offered Kate a blanket she tucked it around her and smiled very slightly as she extended her leg and nudged the TV remote toward him along the coffee table before bringing both her knees back to her chest.

The early afternoon passed like that, stupid television shows and scattered, hushed, half-conversation as Kate held onto whatever composure she'd found.

Around three, Billy and Teddy came in, Teddy's arms loaded down with two big, full, damp-and-drooping paper bags and Tommy's nose immediately told him they were filled with takeout containers.

“Kate,” Teddy said, blinking and widening his eyes just slightly.

“Hi, Teddy,” she said, and her voice was a little hoarse in a way that made Tommy's throat sting sympathetically but she softly cleared it. “Hey Billy. How are you feeling?”

Billy seemed a bit brighter just from surprise, but he took one of the bags from Teddy to even out the weight before he answered.

“I'm good,” he said, and anyone in the world could have told it was a lie, but he was trying. He then carried the bag off into the kitchen and Tommy heard him setting it down on the counter, emptying it out. Teddy immediately looked a little sheepish as he glanced after Billy but immediately felt the need to stand planted there and cover social graces for both of them.

“How are you?” Teddy asked Kate.

“I'm okay,” she said and she smiled and nodded in toward Billy. “It's okay. I get it.”

Tommy didn't doubt that she did after what he'd seen today. He still wished people would stop having such stupidly vague conversations, though. He'd never stop wishing that.

“We... didn't know you were coming,” Teddy mentioned, nodding down to his remaining bag of Chinese and giving a little betraying glance toward Tommy.

“Oh my God, Altman, I do not eat that much,” Tommy said, enunciating carefully specifically to show his disdain for the idea. He glanced over at Kate. Well, okay, he did eat that much. Sometimes. They all knew he did. But he decided to salvage it and take the opportunity for something, so he kept looking at her and gave her his best crooked, charming smile. “Not with a lady present,” he said, deliberately laying it on thick because there was no way to not make that sound ridiculous. He ran with it, the way he ran with everything.

She just raised her eyebrows and the corners of her lips quirked a little. Well, better than nothing.

“Don't go anywhere, okay?” he asked. She shook her head, indicating that she wasn't going to, but she leaned forward a little in her seat, anticipating that he was going to move. He moved before he observed anything else she did, though. He scooped up the other bag from Teddy's arms. _“Heyneedahandtherebro,”_ he justified, almost absolutely unintelligibly. Then he zipped it into the kitchen and started emptying it out and spreading the other little white boxes and aluminum trays with the ones Billy had already set out.

“Um... hungry?” Billy asked, blinking when Tommy was slow enough to be in clear view and not just a blur.

“Snow-peas,” Tommy said.

“What?” Billy asked. Teddy approached behind them and stood back, watching as Tommy scanned over the containers but had no idea what to pick.

“Snow-peas. Bok-choy. One of those. Give me something with one of those in it.”

“... Are you concerned you don't have enough green foods in your diet, or...?” Teddy asked, stepping in a bit and looking at Tommy like he was concerned he had just actually, finally lost his mind.

“No!” Tommy snapped in frustration. “Just—She likes them.”

“Oh,” Billy said and then he started expertly popping open the lids of some of the containers, glancing over them as a little knowing smirk played on his lips. Tommy didn't like it and jabbed him kind of hard in the ribs with his elbow. “Ow!” Billy followed up, stopping what he was doing and turning toward him just a little bit. “I'm trying to _help_ you!”

“Whatever. You have to smile like... five times a day more than you already do for you to be allowed to smile at me like that,” Tommy bargained, smirking in turn and narrowing his eyes just a little bit. He gave Teddy a glance because he figured that deal would be helping him out, too. He saw Billy start glaring out of the corner of his eye and lazily brought his gaze back to him.

“Fine. Whatever. Here,” Billy said, turning his attention back to the food, handing him a red-wrapped package of chopsticks and a white red-printed takeout box.

Tommy glanced down into it and saw what looked like brownish spaghetti noodles and a bunch of mostly-green vegetable stuff, just like he'd asked. He sniffed and had to admit it smelled pretty good—but then, he was starving, like usual. He carried what Tommy had given him back into the living room and to Kate, offering them to her with very deliberate movement, so much that she stared up at him as if a little wary as she took them.

“... Thanks. I'm not... sick or something. You know that, right?”

“Yeah. I just... knew what you liked. No point making a guest get up, right?”

“Thanks,” Kate acknowledged without drilling him about it anymore. She glanced down and her expression seemed to confirm that he did have some vague idea at least because she opened the chopsticks.

“Something to drink?” he asked her.

“Mojito?” she suggested dryly with a faint, cheeky little smile as she twirled the chopsticks in the noodles.

“Sorry. Don't keep anything that strong in the house.”

“Water,” Kate clarified, tone no different or less enthused than if it had been her first choice.

“Lame,” Tommy replied, but he went and got her some water from the kitchen and was back in about ten seconds. “Right back,” he assured her again and then he went and stocked up on a few of the packages for himself and took a can of soda and came back with his arms carefully loaded down before spreading them out on a section of the coffee table right next to Kate, taking a seat beside her, too.

“Gotta make room for the guys,” he excused himself innocently.

“Uh-huh,” Kate replied dubiously but she shifted to make room for him—against her but not pressed together. And Tommy had to admit it was at least warm, nice, as Billy and Teddy came in with their food and they all started watching stupid TV together.

No newscasts. But maybe they'd get there.

\- - -

After five, Rebecca and Jeff Kaplan came in at the same time, chatting about their respective days as they came into the door. Coming through, Rebecca was—as usual—the first to notice.

“Oh, hello,” she addressed Kate warmly but not concealing her surprise.

“Oh. Yeah. Mom, Kate's over,” Billy said.

“I can see that,” she said, reaching down and touching his shoulder where he sat at the end of the sofa. “Good to see you with friends.”

“Mom, I live with my boyfriend,” Billy replied dryly, glancing up at her with a little, genuine smile. Tommy couldn't blame him. If he'd ever said something like that to his _mom—_ his mother, Mary Shepherd—it might have gotten him way, way worse than a brush of gentle fingers to his face that he actually allowed her for a second before he shifted to sit up straight and stop being her _little boy_.

“About that—“ Tommy interjected, sitting up toward the edge of the couch cushion. Now was as good a time as any. He caught the sharp look Kate gave him, but she'd asked and he had to ask sometime.

“Yes, Tommy?” Rebecca asked.

“Can Kate... you know, stay here? For a day or two. She's having a tough time...” He nearly left it at that but he glanced over at her blue eyes and realized he should add something. “... at home.”

“Oh... Kate, dear, is that true?” Rebecca asked, and Tommy wanted to get defensive, but he realized it was being used as a figure of speech, a means for conversation. Rebecca Kaplan didn't actually call him a _liar_ for no reason.

“If it's a problem I don't want to—I can take the couch,” Kate said, turning her gaze up at Rebecca, too.

“... If you're happy with the accommodations we can offer, you're more than welcome in our home,” Rebecca replied. And suddenly Tommy was trying not to feel a strange, new, pleasant smugness— _our_ home. She was still trying to draw him in on it being his home too, and for the first time he definitely didn't mind it. And she seemed oddly proud, too, and he thought maybe that was because Kate offering to take the couch was a kind of tacit compliance with their _house rules_ , and there was a part of him that was never, ever going to stop enjoying that cat-got-away-with-the-cream feeling. No need for her to know Kate had been in his bed when she came by earlier in the afternoon. No harm, no foul.

“Jeff, we're going to have a guest,” Rebecca called as she turned her attention toward the kitchen where her husband had gone, excusing herself casually.

Tommy glared as Billy was looking over at them both. Teddy, too, but Kate was the one who gave him a little bit of a look before he lifted a hand in surrender that he then lightly patted Billy's leg with.

“Five times,” Tommy warned.

“What?” Kate asked, a little defensive.

“Nothing,” Tommy told her, meeting her eyes to assure her it was nothing to do with her.

Billy looked a little defiant and pouty but Tommy just took an opportunity to stretch his arms up big and wide and when he lowered them back down he draped one across the back of the sofa behind Kate without actually touching her much. She looked at him but then she glanced at Billy and he loved the way her smile turned just a little defiant and conspiratorial as she let her head loll over onto his shoulder casually, and for the moment whether it meant anything or not, he was pretty sure they'd both won.

\- - -

Around the time they were ready to go to bed was when it started to get a little awkward again. Billy and Teddy had cleared out, and Tommy had to admit he was glad Billy had spent exactly no time hidden over by the window today, though he had disappeared off to himself for a couple of hours. But everybody did that.

  
Rebecca had made up the couch by tucking a soft sheet over the cushions and she had provided a couple of bed pillows with matching pillowcases and several extra blankets that weren't usually just draped around the living room furniture and she was saying something soft and friendly to Kate as Tommy approached from his room to see her.

“Oh,” Rebecca said upon seeing what Tommy was holding. An old but clean, thin and soft t-shirt of his. Kind of big. “Of course. I don't know what was on my mind. Let me get you some pajamas.”

Kate looked down at Tommy's messily folded shirt and she shook her head a little, reaching out to stop her. She met Tommy's eyes before she spoke and again there was something a little tingling in the pit of his stomach that he _kept_ trying to forget after earlier at the thought that she so actively wanted to wear his shirt to sleep in. It was faint, but it wasn't his fault that the idea was kind of sexy. It hadn't been his _plan_ in offering her something to sleep in, but it was just true.

“No. I'm... okay. Um, if you've got some pants I could wear, that'd be nice?” she requested.

Okay, so no his-t-shirt and just-panties. Damn. But he understood.

\- - -

Tommy was still awake. And he'd gotten up to go to the bathroom, or something, three distinct times. He was staring at the ceiling, but he swore when he breathed that he could still smell Kate's hair on his pillow. He breathed a little deeper on purpose and shut his eyes, but in an instant they were open again. He stretched again and tucked his hands behind his head, elbows bent.

It felt like something was _different_ tonight and it excited him. Everything had been the same for ages, and _nothing_ had been the same. And now Kate was _here_. Asleep. In the middle of the night. And sure, it would have been a lot nicer if she had been in his bed, but that would've been a little awkward with Teddy in the room. Even if she never touched him again—he hated thinking that, but he had to be fair and admit the possibility—it still might make things _different_ again. Good different. If she stayed, if Billy stopped moping by the window, if whatever had made Kate want to kiss him made them both feel some kind of alive again. Maybe they could _do something_ again. The four of them. That was just about enough.

He abruptly sat up again.

Teddy groaned and his hand came up over his forehead as he rubbed at the sides of his eyes.

“Did you drink an entire soda fountain when I wasn't looking?”

Tommy just huffed a little and ignored his question as he swung his feet over onto the floor and wandered over to the door again. He was tired, but he couldn't sleep. He paused just before he opened it, though, looking over at Teddy and squinting a little to focus just a bit better though the dark.

“Teddy?” he asked, expectantly.

“Yeah?”

“You know, about Billy—his whole... _thing_ he's got right now?”

“Sort of?” Teddy guessed as he sat up on his elbows with interest and more clearly met Tommy's eyes.

“Yeah, well. I've got this theory.”

“Which is?”

Tommy rubbed is lips together, smoothing down the way they were slightly chapped in one spot with his saliva as he got up the nerve to even talk about whatever his brother chose to do in bed. And it had _nothing_ to do with it being Teddy. It was just... Billy was his brother. He had a brother.

“Go kiss his brains out,” he threw out as a sweeping but definite suggestion, and before Teddy had a chance to respond in any way whatsoever, he let himself out of the room and closed the door behind him, careful not to slam it.

This time, rather than following his feet to the bathroom or to the kitchen, skirting quietly around the edge of the living room and frankly feeling kind of creepy, he just quietly padded over to the edge of the sofa where Kate slept and knelt, even with the center cushion and her waist. For less than a second, he indulged in watching her breathe—the way her neat fingernails actually caught some light that came in through the slits in the closed blinds at the window, the way her now dried and combed hair spilled a different way over her pillow, the shadow of her eyelashes on her cheeks and the way she was still perfect with her make-up washed off—something he'd rarely seen before. But he couldn't just stare at her, so he reached out—feeling his own fingers and making sure they were warm enough—before he gently shook her shoulder.

“Hey,” he whispered.

Kate started but was instantly awake and she blinked at him, moving her hand as if batting something out of her face though nothing was there unless it was a stray hair.

“What?” she asked, a little strained with what wanted to be a yawn. She looked up at him and he saw her vision clear to that sharp accuracy it always had. “Tommy? What are you doing?”

“Can't sleep,” he informed her.

“So you...” she prompted, squirming a little on her back and holding her blankets close, but she was surprisingly patient for Kate Bishop.

“Came to see you,” he said simply.

“I'm asleep,” she informed him.

“No you're not.”

“Trying to sleep.”

“Tell me,” he said.

“Tell you what?” Kate asked—little crinkle in her brow.

“Anything,” Tommy told her, and to him it was writing her some kind of blank check he didn't know if she'd ever know how to cash.

“... You told them I was your girlfriend,” she said after a moment's consideration, still almost-frowning but not quite there.

“I did not.”

“You know what I mean,” she insisted.

“Yeah. Well... I can... dream, right?” Tommy asked, and he wasn't trying to be a smartass at all. It really was something like the kinds of things his dreams were made of when he dared to have them.

She was frowning then. Not a good sign. But then her expression softened and she glanced slightly up and over the arm of the sofa toward the window and back at him, sighing her way into a tired smile.

“Yeah?” she asked him.

“Yeah,” he confirmed.


End file.
